Of Spiders and Scrapers: Decomposing Web Pages 101

by linuxmag • 17 years ago

6 9 17 years ago

Ardit202• 17 years ago

"Over the years, I’ve likely scraped tens of Web sites. In fact, in 2005, I scraped the entirety of the then-current Linux Magazine site to port its content to a new content management system."

Society does not benefit by allowing these people such freedom. So, shouldn't this guy be prosecuted and sent to jail?

jm42• 17 years ago

Huh? The guy wrote this article for the same magazine he scraped articles from back in 2005 so I'm assuming he has, at the very least, some sort of affiliation with them. It sounds like it was part of a data migration strategy rather than theft.

Ardit202• 17 years ago

Yes, I realised that after reading the quote another three times. The article itself however seems to be about scrapping, or theft, so I thought that quote describes what he does well, but of course failed to see that he works for Linux Magazine.

miracle2• 17 years ago

Scraping is theft. Alone downloading and storing a copyrighted article is forbidden by law in certain countries.

It doesn't matter if you make the article public then or not.

jakewolf• 17 years ago

There are plenty of legitimate sites without data feeds where scraping becomes necessary such as some .gov sites.

Of Spiders and Scrapers: Decomposing Web Pages 101

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